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Some Parallels of Workplace Resistance and Resistance to Consumerism: Steps Towards a Cross-Fertilization

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Some Parallels of Workplace Resistance and Resistance to Consumerism: Steps Towards a Cross-Fertilization SOME PARALLELS OF WORKPLACE RESISTANCE AND RESISTANCE TO CONSUMERISM: STEPS TOWARDS A CROSS-FERTILIZATION Yiannis Gabriel, University of Bath [email protected] Studies of workplace resistance have for the past 40 years generated a wide range of theories and insights into the changing nature of the labour process. These studies have identified and explored strikes, picketing and whistle-blowing as well as more covert or questionable forms of resistance such as time-wasting, cynical detachment, irony, absenteeism and pilfering. Drawing on several critical traditions, including Marxism, poststructuralist and postcolonial studies, feminism and psychoanalysis, the discourse on workplace resistance has become a dominant theme in Critical Management Studies. Almost coincidental with the rise of studies in workplace resistance has been a surge in interest among scholars studying contemporary consumption, in consumer resistance – resistance to particular consumer practices or more generally resistance to the ethos and ideology of Western consumerism. Initially fuelled by a recognition of the rebellious qualities of youth culture, interest in consumer resistance, like workplace resistance, has identified a great range of resisting practices. These include overt resistance like boycotts of particular products and companies and the use of particular objects as symbols of rebellion. Looting, shoplifting and eating disorders have also been studied as expressions of resistance to the consumerism. More recently a generalized resistance to buying and spending and to relentless consumption (Czarniawska, 2013) has become associated with new 'lifestyles', variously described as downshifting, voluntary simplicity or anti-consumption. On first appearance, many of the issues raised in connection with workplace resistance are also raised in relation to consumer resistance. What fuels such resistance? How effective is it? How well-organized is it? How easily does resistance get incorporated into existing regimes of power? It is curious, therefore, that these two broad traditions of theorizing resistance have taken very little notice of each other. In line with a long convention in the social sciences, the domain of production and the domain of consumption have been kept separate, the former the province of organizational theory, sociology of work and Human Resource Management, the latter the field of consumer and cultural studies and mainstream sociology (Thompson & Smith, 2009). Scholars in each sphere have assumed that theirs is the sovereign one, ignoring the possibility that resistance in the sphere of work and resistance in the sphere of consumption may be related. The insights of an earlier generation of social critics like Marcuse (1969), who argued that alienated quiescence at work is the other side of the same coin as repressed desublimation in consumption, long seem to have been forgotten. This paper seeks to reclaim the area of overlap between the two spheres, identifying some similarities and differences in the ways resistance is practiced and seeking to create some cross-fertilization between the two. This would seem particularly promising as macro-economic, social and technological developments, like work precarization, the rise of the internet, and increasing social inequalities and insecurity, that affect people's working patterns and experiences have also a pronounced impact on their outlooks as consumers. Part 1 of this article offers a distillation of some the enduring tensions in the discussion of workplace resistance and their commensurate political positions while Part 2 rehearses at greater length some of the equivalent tensions in consumer resistance. The concluding section draws the parallels between the two and offers some suggestions of how a cross-fertilization between the two may be undertaken. 1 Part 1. Theorizing Workplace resistance Theories of workplace resistance have always been linked to theories of workplace controls, resistance representing an attempt by employees to wrest back some control from their employers or their managers. Inevitably then, resistance stems from a dualistic and antagonistic conception of the labour process, one that involves conflict as well as cooperation or, rather, one in which conflict always threatens to disrupt cooperation. Forms of control as well as types of resistance display a bewildering range and variety; they differ across historical periods, different types of organization and different factory regimes. Yet, there is some agreement among theorists studying workplace controls that, in late capitalism, these have become more pervasive, more subtle and more invasive than traditional forms of control associated with Fordist factories and Weberian bureaucracies. Contemporary technologies of workplace control include not only direct forms of electronic surveillance, administrative rules and regulations, organizational hierarchies, mechanical and spatial arrangements, cultural manipulation and indoctrination but also, importantly, discursive controls embedded in language, labelling, classifications and so forth which 'normalize' them and render them all but invisible. Thus, the institutionalized use of words like 'teamwork, 'quality' or 'customer service', individually or in combinations, incorporate various assumptions capable of controlling employees' behaviour every bit as vigilantly as electronic surveillance, threats of discipline or assembly line technologies. The proliferation and increasing invisibility of workplace controls has posed special challenges to researchers studying resistance. These will be addressed under the following four headings: What counts as resistance? What are the motives and objectives of resistance? How effective is resistance? What is the price of resistance? What counts as resistance? Traditional forms of worker resistance, such as strikes, work-to-rule and picketing, have been widely studied by sociologists of work and industrial relations theorists (Beynon, 1973; Collinson, 1994; Hyman, 2000; Nichols & Beynon, 1977; Thompson & Ackroyd, 1995). In addition to forms of industrial action explicitly aimed at hurting employers and gaining some advantage for workers, resistance has also been associated with more passive forms of worker misbehaviour or recalcitrance (Ackroyd & Thompson, 1999), ranging from pilfering, time wasting and sabotage to labour turnover (or work exit) and absenteeism (partial exit). It is immediately apparent that some of these types of resistance are individual, while others are collective, seeking to muster the workers' collective muscle in gaining some material advantage. It is also clear that some of these forms of resistance scarcely trouble management or even take place with its collusion. Thus, pilfering can be seen as a fringe benefit for poorly paid jobs (e.g. Gabriel, 1988; Mars, 1982). Furthermore, some of the traditionally recognized forms of worker resistance are not seen or intended as resistance by the workers themselves – reporting sick or quitting under the stresses of a life-sapping job can scarcely be viewed as 'standing up' to managerial authority or controls. Finally and more contentiously, it has been argued that certain forms of worker misbehaviour, such as various ruses, stoppages and work-related 'games', not only failed to put any pressure on management but represented indirect forms of collusion to managerial controls (Clegg, 1987). To put it another way, when the workers think they are dodging managerial controls, they are dancing to the bosses' tunes. The question then arises in whose eyes do these types of action constitute resistance – the resisting workers themselves, the managers who are ostensibly being resisted (and let us not forget that managers themselves are liable to resist their own bosses) or the scholars who define such actions as resistance on the basis of an as yet undetermined criterion. This tension in theorizing resistance has become exacerbated in the last twenty years or so, as various theorists have, first, theorized ever more discreet or invisible forms managerial control, 2 and, second, sought to identify ever more subtle forms of worker resistance. In a seminal contribution, Collinson (1994) described these latter forms of resistance as 'resistance through distance' and they include various types of passive resistance, ranging from refusal to call managers by their first name to cynical detachment, irony and satire. This kind of resistance may not directly threaten the regimes of capitalist control, but they support Kondo's (1990) contention that resistance and collusion cannot be separated from each other – they both take place inside the mechanisms of power, not outside them. A consequence of this position has been to theorize identity as comprising both resisting and accommodating selves and resistance itself being forever drawn towards containment and normalization. A way out of the conundrum of what exactly counts as resistance has been to argue that resistance is not a set of behaviours or actions, but a social construction (Mumby, 2005; Prasad & Prasad, 1998). This makes not only resistance itself but the definition of resistance part of a contested terrain (R. Edwards, 1979), the object of a struggle which permits different views of what does and does not constitute resistance to coexist and, at times, fight it out. One clear advantage of this approach is that it accounts for a wide variety of constructions, existing side by side (Thomas & Hardy, 2011). Thus
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